If you survive...

Amazing, innovative and unique smell. Lots of dry spices in the opening, then dries down to a beautiful sweet amber. If you survive the first 30 minutes, you'll LOVE this fragrance!

Spiced Amber...

A very nice take on amber by Lutens here. Ambre Sultan opens with a ton of herbs and spice. At first I was afraid the spice might be a tad too much, but things soon get under control a few minutes into the scent's development. As the spices recede, the amber emerges to mingle with them in just the right proportions of spice to amber. The dry-down adds a bit of sandalwood to sweeten things a bit, but Amber Sultan never makes the mistake of a lot of other amber scents in being *too* sweet. Even in the dry-down remnants of the spice remains to keep things interesting. Projection is above average, as is longevity. Ambre Sultan is maybe not my absolute favorite amber scent, but it must be in the top three or four I have tried to date and is highly recommended and full bottle worthy, IMO. 4 stars out of 5.

dry mineral amber

Ambre Sultan is my favorite ‘contemporary’ amber (as opposed to a classic amber such as Shalimar, for instance) by far. Amber can be steered into so many directions: boozy, honeyed, gourmand, resinous, vanillic. The times I’ve smelled pure labdanum resin I’ve been struck by its mineral smell. It smells a bit like warm stones. The dried, dusty herbal quality of AS (oregano, bay, myrtle) is the perfect complement to its flinty tone. While one angle is herbal, it reads as more botanical than strictly culinary. The other is mineral, but both equally enhance the resinousness and keep AS clearly out of the sweet, gourmand range.

Others have mentioned that AS grows vanillic by drydown and therefore like every other contemporary amber. I get the benzoin and the patchouli, but I find the composition actually grows drier and a bit more bitter as time passes. It replaces the fading culinary feel, taking over its part in labdanum’s narrative, maintaining the dry, matte flintiness through to the rich but low-sillage drydown.

When I first smelled AS, I could only imagine wearing it in colder weather. Fortunately for me in the 9 months of summer heat in southern California, it absolutely blooms. It’s just delectable on sweaty skin.

Sounds perfect but surprisingly leaves me wanting more...

Ambre Sultan is the first fragrance that anyone will recommend to a lover of amber fragrances as a must. It's described as spicy, resinous, dark, heady and rich and all that with amber's underlying warmth binding every note together. Considering the fact that I like warm, oriental, spicy ambers, this sounded like HG to my ears. Surprisingly though, after testing it a couple of times at the store, I always left with something else by monsieur Lutens as Ambre Sultan failed to woo me. And then I went through a spending & hoarding phase last spring/summer and finally bought it.

So here I am, almost a year later, with no more than 15ml missing from my bottle. Why am I not loving the stuff? This is a question that plagues me often when I run into raving reviews and recommendations of the fragrance. The description sounds definitely up my alley and I can't honestly say that it doesn't fit the real juice (I'm being sceptical about the spicy characterization though, as personally I don't find it especially spicy). It's not that I actually dislike Ambre Sultan, I like it a lot. But I SHOULD love it based on my favorite notes and instead, I find myself rarely using it.

I recently came to a theory that it's way too rounded and smooth for me. There are no sharp edges in Ambre Sultan, no roughness, no smokiness, no overt sweetness. It's so well crafted and balanced that nothing stands out in the end; it's neither too sweet, nor too dry, not too spicy, nor too bland, not too resinous, nor too light. I understand why most people consider this a good thing, but to me this seems more like a reluctance to offend anyone which translates to a lack of character and boldness (please don't get mad at me! That's my personal opinion and an amateur's one I'll admit).

I have actually gotten compliments on Ambre Sultan and had people asking me what I wear, so it does indeed appeal to most people. But somehow, this never feels like me, it stays foreign on my skin and thus could never be a comfort scent as the rest of my ambers are. It also can't be a fashion statement since it misses the edge that I actually like in my perfumes. However, it's nice to wear when I go out clubbing or for a drink since the sillage is quite good and it seems to be a crowd pleaser.

For reference, my favorite perfumes are Idole by Lubin, Ambre Fetiche by Annique Gutal, L'Ombre Fauve by Parfumerie Generale, Dark Amber & Ginger Lily by Jo Malone, Aoud Meloki by Montale and Cadjmere by Parfumerie Generale.

The fragrance pyramid may look inticing, but body chemistry (and one's love or hate relationship with desert climes) is everything

This is my first foray into Luten's fragrances, and what an inauspicious beginning. Since I love wood, amber, and resinous perfumes I thought this would be a real winner for me, but it turned into a "fail" very quickly. The opening was medicinal, bitter, and the following stages were equally unpleasant. Acrid and harsh, it smelled like the Arizona desert on my skin. An unfriendly scent that doesn't welcome but repels. I gave it to my husband and it works better with his body chemistry but it's still not a winner in my (or his) eyes. My tiny sample will last a lifetime at this rate.

Ambre Sultan

Rich full and sexy, Ambre Sultan might be the most
accuate Amber in perfumery nothing synthitic nor
chemically enhanced Serge Lutens uses the finest
oils to bring back to nature to it's simpicity,
Aesthetic wise i can conjour in a number of ways
to describe this and let my imagination run wild.
If the color of Amber had a scent no doubt Amber
Sultan whould fail, like it's namesake it's warm
and opaque not translusent or delicate, to lure
you to an ancient world where the sky touches the
earth the note of Sandalwood adds the firey nuances, Myrrah and incense burns throughout the night
with it's pure white smoke ascends the endless sky like an offering of the night and the cool wind blows through sand dunes and refreshes your senses
This scent brings to Ancient in all of us.

Amber, Indeed!

I'm starting to think that Amber should be declared an official perfume category. Serge Lutens AMBRE SULTAN is a beautiful member of a huge class of perfumes all of which are much more similar to one another than any of them is to any other oriental perfume.

AMBRE SULTAN opens with an evanescent herbality which is swiftly overwhelmed by the thick labadanum amber. This particular version is slightly smoky, not too sweet, and rich and thick like a perfume. Of course, Serge Lutens is one of the houses which has obstinately refused to succumb to the temptation to dilute their wares. As a consequence, the apparently high price is not really at all, since you're not getting 50ml of a fragrance with two hours of longevity. No, you're getting a very big bottle of perfume!

This entry in the Lutens line-up is no exception to the rule. Very thick and viscous and yummy. However, I generally find that amber perfumes prepared at proper concentration are all pretty thick and viscous and yummy. The drydowns of these compositions are very similar, and I honestly believe that in a blind test only a person with a huge amount of experience sniffing specifically amber perfumes could tell them apart.